| By :
Wendy Moyer
If you have marketing material you want to get your target audience to see you need an effective way to distribute your material to the people who will most likely act on your offer. Whether it's on the Internet or through the mail or over the phone, for whatever it is you want to disseminate, the first thing you will need is a highly focused mailing list. A mailing list is a compilation of names and addresses that companies use to send information and solicitations for sales to large numbers of recipients. Mailing lists used on the World Wide Web use people's email addresses instead of their postal addresses. How to Build a Mailing List The primary way most companies build mailing lists is by recording the names and addresses of every person that buys something from them or expresses any interest in their company or its products. Another approach would be to get this information from your customers' checks. If you are currently selling through the mail you should already have this information. If you have a brick and mortar business, you can have a contest and ask your customers to fill out entry cards or put their business cards into a bowl. Additionally, you can put a sign-up sheet near the cash register so your customers can request advance notices about sales and special events. You can also acquire names by buying display or classified print ads and putting together a list of the people that respond to your ads. If you are an online marketer you should ask people to subscribe or opt in to your email newsletter. In return for their email address most Internet marketers offer an informative digital report or ebook that their prospects can download. Any of these methods will compile a list of customer and prospects - your "house list". You'll want to treat this list like gold because it can be an ongoing source of sales and important feedback from people that are truly interested in what you are offering. A Highly Effective Mailing List Short Cut If you are just starting out or if you are trying to dramatically expand your business there is a faster way to get things done. Consider renting a mailing list. The best, most cost efficient way you can get highly targeted mailing lists is to buy them through an experienced list broker. List brokers keep up to date on available lists and can help you to target the lists that would best work for you, your company, and your purposes. Many list brokers can also custom design a list for you. Typically it will cost you between fifty and eighty dollars per thousand names. However, some list brokers allow you to try a sample list before renting a list that contains thousands of names and addresses. These lists will often be sent to your company on CDs so you can download them into your computer. However they are for one-time use only. Just about every list owner includes their own names and addresses in their lists so they can see if you are using their list more than one time. In order to have a statistically significant sample you should rent a list with a minimum of 5,000 names and expect to get at least a one to two percent response.
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